Having previously lost the original Human Landing System (HLS) contract to SpaceX, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin has announced a new “National Team” to build a second lunar lander. in the new “National Team” Boeing replaces Northrop Grumman. Northrop Grumman has now teamed with Dynetics (one of the original three competitors for the HLS contract). The other National Team members remain as Lockheed Martin, Draper Lab, Astrobotic and Honeybee Robotics. Both the Blue Origin-led National team and the Dynetics-led team are competing to build a second lunar lander for the Artemis programme as part of a NASA Sustaining Lunar Development (SLD) contract. NASA banned SpaceX from bidding for this contract.
Comment by David Todd: The SLD lunar lander concept for longer term lunar operations is all well and good. However, if NASA wants to beat China back to the Moon it needs a smaller simpler lunar lander, much like the Grumman (now Northrop Grumman) built Apollo Lunar Module (LM), as fast as possible. The Apollo LM used simpler storable propellants which ignited on contact rather than the LOX/Methane combination of cryogenic propellants now planned for these new HLS and SLD landers. While the latter propellants are better performing, they have several technical problems with respect to their storage and transfer which have yet to be fully solved.
SLD lunar lander concept. Courtesy: Dynetics
